WTO History Project

Image
Annotation

Designed to provide access now and in the future to documents created by groups that protested the World Trade Organization's "Ministerial Week," held in Seattle from November 29–December 3, 1999. Offers texts of more than 80 oral histories of organizers and participants, 73 photographs, and images of 224 fliers, posters, and leaflets. Also includes 46 planning documents, 18 signs carried by protesters, two audio files, three videos, and a timeline documenting 520 events from March to December 1999. A second timeline covers the week of protests and a table with contact information for more than 1,400 organizations that opposed the meetings. Documents in the collection can be searched by keyword, organizations, and issues—labor, environment, trade, democracy, direct action, food, agriculture, health, and independent media.

The site's creators state they are "dedicated to ensuring that any account ever written of the WTO protests be attentive to the range of people who turned out, the varieties of strategies and issues they brought to the streets and the meeting rooms, and the coalitions that emerged and failed." As a result, the site will be of great value to those studying social protest movements in the late 20th century.

Woman's Legal History Biography Project

Image
Annotation

The three sections of this website focus on women lawyers in the U.S. and women's legal history. The Women's Lawyers Index offers more than 700 listings of female lawyers in U.S. history, each with links to biographical information, collected papers and archival material (if available), and articles, as well as a bibliography. The content of these sections is uneven, though, some having far more entries than others.

The Clara Shortridge Foltz section primarily consists of 13 articles by Babcock on Foltz, the first female lawyer on the Pacific Coast. It focuses on the relation of early women lawyers to suffrage and other reform movements.

"Research Resources" provides 23 links to other websites on women lawyers and women's legal history, as well as over 50 links to historiographical articles, articles from periodicals and legal journals, and general interest articles. A bibliography lists 38 books and 18 articles dealing with women's legal history. This site is a useful launching point for researching female lawyers and women's legal history.

The Pill

Image
Annotation

Designed as a companion to the PBS film, this site documents the development of the birth control pill and its effect on women's health. The site offers a synopsis of the film (approximately 1,000 words) and about a dozen primary sources, including letters between birth control pill researchers. The site also includes a timeline that documents references to birth control as far back in history as Biblical Genesis.

A Gallery showcases approximately 15 birth control pill package designs. People and Events introduces visitors to the researchers (including Margaret Sanger) who dedicated years to the project, as well as milestones in the pill's development. Special Features uses a Flash presentation to demonstrate how the pill works to prevent pregnancy, explores the many shifts in sexual attitudes that have been attributed to the pill, and asks viewers to participate in an online poll.

A Teacher's Guide features lesson plans in geography, civics, history, and society, and presents challenging exercises for students. For example, one exercise asks students to survey the effect geography had on sexual attitudes by comparing laws about contraception from state to state in 1960.

Although the site is not a comprehensive archive, the primary sources and multimedia exhibits make it valuable, especially for research into birth control and women's issues.

Women Working, 1800-1930

Image
Annotation

This site offers textual and visual historical resources for teaching, learning, and researching the history of women working in the United States. It currently includes almost 3,500 digitized books, 7,500 manuscript pages, and 1,200 photographs. Holdings include letters, diaries, scrapbooks, magazines, catalogs, photographs, books, and pamphlets (both non-fiction and fiction).

Visitors may browse through the "New Additions" area, look through materials by topic (such as home labor, arts, or business), search catalog keywords, or perform a full text search.

American Memory Learning Page

Image
Annotation

Designed to provide support for elementary, middle, and high school history teachers, this site makes the entire American Memory collection at the Library of Congress available for classroom learning. Using the more than 7 million digital sources available through American Memory's 100 collections, the creators have written and collected 140 lesson plans for teaching American history. Organized chronologically and thematically, the lesson plans are detailed suggestions for classroom activities. Each has a recommended age group and uses primary sources collected by students or teachers from American Memory.

Especially useful are the included guides on using primary sources, using American Memory resources, and using digital or Internet sources in the classroom. A "Professional Development" section offers online workshops and tutorials to improve teachers' digital literacy. An excellent resource for the classroom, this site would be useful to both student and teacher.

Women of Valor

Image
Annotation

This site introduces Emma Goldman—an immigrant, an advocate of free love, a promoter of birth control, and an anarchist. The designers have done a splendid job in tying the many facets of Goldman's public life together into one set of interrelated narratives. An "Introduction" is divided into 13 thematically coherent sections, such as Early Years, Anarchism, Use of Violence, and Deportation. Each runs approximately 500 words. A Timeline is useful for placing Goldman into historical and cultural context.

There are several dozen artifacts, including the full text of two books, six cartoons, four historical documents, an analytical essay, two personal letters, 12 news clippings, and 16 photographs. The information is well documented, and includes a detailed bibliography.

The care that the producers took in explaining potentially confusing or problematic terms (like feminism and suffrage) makes the site particularly appropriate for high school and undergraduate students. Although not a comprehensive archive, this site nonetheless provides an informative introduction to Goldman and her role in American history.

A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers

Image
Annotation

This curriculum addresses labor politics and economics from the colonial period to the present day. Conceived and written by James D. Brown, Jr, "in cooperation with teachers from the metro Chicago area and local union members," it is divided into 11 chronological sections, each comprised of several elements: a 100–200-word overview; an inventory of major themes, episodes, and concepts; and a feature entitled "Integrating Labor History into Effective Teaching of the Period." This last portion recommends questions and lessons for students, and, for several sections, provides primary source materials. Thus "The Growth of a New Nation" outlines a lesson that asks students to compare Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence with an 1829 essay by George H. Evans—a founder of New York's Working Man's Party—entitled "The Working Men's Declaration of Independence."

The 11 sections emphasize gains achieved by organized labor and invite teachers to "highlight the stark contrast between today's working environment and the relationship between workers and owners of the past." Includes a list of 44 "Significant People in America's Labor History"; a 16-title bibliography; a link to an international news desk providing daily stories dealing with labor groups and issues; and additional material on Illinois labor history.

Some sections of the curriculum are thinner than others. More curiously, the site does not furnish any primary documents from the 20th century, and generally relies more on lists of events and issues than the sort of narrative prose that can enliven the past.

The Internet African-American History Challenge

Image
Annotation

Features illustrated biographical sketches, each approximately 400 words in length, of 12 notable 19th-century African Americans—Alexander Crummell, Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, Harriet Tubman, Henry McNeal Turner, John Mercer Langston, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, Mary Church Terrell, Mary Ann Shadd, Nat Turner, Richard Allen, and Sojourner Truth.

Includes three interactive quizzes, based on information contained in the biographies, divided into three levels of difficulty.

Also provides guidelines for classroom use, including directions for setting up an "online grade book." The site's creators plan to add sketches and quizzes on notable 20th-century African Americans.

This user-friendly site is a useful tool for introducing African American history to young students.

Women's History: The 1850 Worcester Convention

Image
Annotation

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the First National Women's Rights Convention, held in 1850 in Worcester, MA, this site provides an archive of documents relating to the convention, including eight speeches, 15 newspaper accounts, 14 letters, and selected items from the proceedings.

Also offers three speeches from the 1851 convention, as well as a host of other resources concerning the 19th-century woman's movement more generally. Diary entries, government reports, tracts for and against suffrage, poems from Godey's Lady's Book, and the full text of several books are included, such as The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility (1856).

On an ongoing basis, the site presents essays about and selections by formerly well-known advocates for women's rights who since have been forgotten; currently the works of Jane Grey Swisshelm and Caroline Wells Healy Dall are featured.

Also includes links to 24 related websites.

Comprehensive with regard to the 1850 convention, and useful for more general resources devoted to the mid-19th-century women's rights movement.

Center for Working-Class Studies

Image
Annotation

Introduces an organization begun in 1996 that "creates social spaces for civic and academic conversations on working-class life and culture and its intersections with other identities and serves as a clearinghouse for information on working-class culture, issues, and pedagogy." The site presents information about the Center, its outreach programs and electronic discussion network; a 1,000-word essay defining working-class studies and commenting on recent trends; six course syllabi; online student exhibitions for a course on "Working in Youngstown," which deals with the history and representations of work in "Steeltown, U.S.A." and throughout the U.S.; 88 abstracts of papers presented at the 1999 conference on "Class, Identity, and Nation"; 84 partially annotated links to related resources, including 24 for museums on working-class and labor history; and a bibliography organized into 24 thematic categories such as "Working-Class Fiction," "Class as Culture," "Class Perception in the U.S.," and "Class and Sexuality." A useful site for introducing students to discussions of class and labor issues in American history.